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Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters

Atom “pinhole camera” with nanometer resolution

V. I. Balykin, P. A. Borisov, Vladilen S Letokhov, Павел Николаевич Мелентьев, S. N. Rudnev, A. P. Cherkun, A. P. Akimenko, Pavel Yu. Apel, Vladimir A. Skuratov

Published Dec 1, 2006• 23 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An atom “pinhole camera” with nanometer resolution has been experimentally implemented for the first time. Owing to the use of this camera, an array of ∼10 6 identical nanostructures of Cr atoms with a characteristic size of the nanostructure of less than 50 nm has been created on a glass surface. Nanostructures of arbitrary shapes have been created.

DOI
10.1134/s0021364006200124

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An atom “pinhole camera” with nanometer resolution has been experimentally implemented for the first time. Owing to the use of this camera, an array of ∼10 6 identical nanostructures of Cr atoms with a characteristic size of the nanostructure of less than 50 nm has been created on a glass surface. Nanostructures of arbitrary shapes have been created.
The most efficient method for controlling the motion of material particles in experimental physics is the use of interaction potentials with electromagnetic fields. The static magnetic and electric interaction potentials are used in the optics of charged particles. In the optics of neutral atoms, the various interaction potentials of atoms with laser and electromagnetic fields are used in addition to the static fields. The effective methods of diffraction, interference, mirror reflection of atoms are implemented in atom optics. The most difficult problem in atom optics is the problem of high-resolution focusing of neutral atoms, which is promising for the nondestructive method for probing the surface at the atomic level, as well as for the creation of nanostructures on the surface. Although there are many proposals for focusing of atomic beams, this problem is experimentally unsolved. The main difficulty is the creation of the interaction potential of the atom with the electromagnetic field that is close to an ideal lens for atoms.In this paper, we experimentally implement another approach to the problem of focusing and construction of an image in atom optics, which is based on a well known idea of optical pinhole camera. The pinhole camera in optics is a camera without lens. Light forming an image passes through a small hole. In our experiment with the atom pinhole camera the Cr atomic beam passes through a set of holes in a metal mask and thereby forms, by analogy with optics, a glowing object of a given geometry. The atoms pass through the holes in the mask, propagate in vacuum along rectilinear trajectories, similar to light rays, and are incident on a thin film (thickness 5 mum) placed at a distance of 90 mm from the mask with a large number (n =107-108/cm2) of nanoholes (50 nm diameter). Each hole of the film is a pinhole camera for atoms, which forms its individual image of the object on the substrate surface placed at a distance of l = 5mum behind the film.
Sub-micrometer light patterns play a pivotal role in biology, biophysics, and AMO physics, yet their in situ characterization is limited in spatial resolution and sensitivity. Here, we present an atom camera with a single ultracold atom in an optical tweezer as a scanning probe. Measuring the energy shift on the spin states with the long coherence time and polarization-sensitive transitions yields highly sensitive, high-resolution 2D imaging of both intensity and polarization ellipticity. We characterize the polarization of a tightly-focused beam, observing its non-trivial profile. The spatial resolution is fundamentally limited by the atom’s position uncertainty, suppressed down to quantum fluctuations (~25 nm) in the motional ground state of the tweezer, with an experimentally obtained upper bound of σ ≤ 96(4) nm. This method enables imaging beyond the diffraction limit, surpassing previous approaches limited by thermal fluctuations of the atom, and provides a powerful tool for designing and analyzing submicron-scale light patterns. In situ super-resolution imaging of light has inherent limitations when applied to the polarization profile. Here, the authors introduce an “atom camera” approach by means of a single tweezer-trapped 87Rb atom measuring the field-induced shifts at sub-micrometer steps, achieving resolution beyond the optical diffraction limit.
The ability to fabricate nanometer-sized structures that are stable in air has the potential to contribute significantly to the advancement of new nanotechnologies and our understanding of nanoscale systems. Laser light can be used to control the motion of atoms on a nanoscopic scale. Chromium atoms were focused by a standing-wave laser field as they deposited onto a silicon substrate. The resulting nanostructure consisted of a series of narrow lines covering 0.4 millimeter by 1 millimeter. Atomic force microscopy measurements showed a line width of 65 +/- 6 nanometers, a spacing of 212.78 nanometers, and a height of 34 +/-+ 10 nanometers. The observed line widths and shapes are compared with the predictions of a semiclassical atom optical model.
The goal of the project was to observe a spiral wavefront in the fluorescent light from rubidium atoms, an idea that has been described in theory but not shown experimentally. When unpolarized light with a specific wavelength passes through rubidium atoms, it creates a spherical wavefront that is uniform in all directions. When the light becomes circularly polarized, this wavefront should become a spiral instead. We wanted to observe this shift by using a grating to create a diffraction pattern which should shift up or down depending on the helicity of the incoming light. We created a diffraction pattern with the fluorescence, but we needed to extensively test the camera's spatial resolution to see if it could detect the expected motion on the order of nanometers. After various forms of data analysis and testing two cameras, we believe we are being limited by systematic error that currently prohibits us from seeing such small motion. This error can be reduced by eliminating sources of shaking in the physical setup.
Atomic beam holography is a unique technique by which to fabricate a nanoscale object by using the interference of matter waves of ultracold atoms. The atomic de Broglie wave coming through a hologram interferes with and reconstructs a desired structure on a substrate. We first demonstrated holographic manipulation of metastable Ne atoms of 7 nm wavelength, where we showed the reconstruction of an “F” pattern and improvement of it. In this article, we propose and show techniques to manipulate three-dimensionally cooled Ne atoms. Atomic beam holography has the potential to make atomic-size objects, and the freedom in designing the hologram enables us to make not only a binary pattern but also an analog (gray scale) pattern. The resolution demonstrated in this experiment was about 60μ, but the minimum feature size expected is theoretically the same as the wavelength, i.e., several nanometers.